A streaming-only Super Bowl won’t happen in Brian Rolapp’s tenure in the NFL, he says. The NFL’s chief media and business officer spoke to Benjamin Strauss of The Washington Post about a variety of topics, including a Super Bowl held behind a streaming paywall. Rolapp doesn’t think technology is quite ready for that yet.

“I don’t think I’ll be working there when that happens,” Rolapp said during the paper’s Futurist Summit via Sportico. “I think we’re a long way off from that. We had 200 million people watch the Super Bowl. I think the Internet could handle that technically, but we’re not quite there yet.”

NFL brass have maintained that broadcast TV is the best way to reach viewers. Commissioner Roger Goodell said during Super Bowl Week that we wouldn’t see a streaming-only Super Bowl in his tenure, either. He says the league is, “committed to broadcast television” because it’s the broadest platform available. Rolapp echoed the commissioner’s statement:

“I think the NFL specifically, but sports in general, is really the reason why people are showing up to linear television,” Rolapp said. “It serves our purposes very well: The vast majority of our games are still on linear television and even the games we stream exclusively, like the Amazon games, are on over-the-air television for free in the local markets of the participating teams.”

In Rolapp’s perspective, streaming is a complimentary service that aims to capture younger fans who may have either ditched cable or never signed up for it at all. However, broadcast TV will be the NFL’s primary residence for at least the next decade.

“We have made our bet for the next seven-to-11 years that linear television will still play a very important role in our distribution, and I don’t think it’s going to zero.”

During the NFL Wild Card round, NBCUniversal OTT streaming platform Peacock served as the home of the first ever streaming-exclusive National Football League Wild Card game and finished with a record performance. The thrilling playoff matchup that registered as the coldest game in the history of GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium resulted in a 26-7 win for the Kansas City Chiefs over the Miami Dolphins.

An average minute audience of 23 million viewers tuned in to witness the pivotal game amid the gelid conditions, rendering it the most-streamed matchup in NFL history. This figure includes Peacock and NFL+, along with local NBC stations in Miami and Kansas City that were presenting the game to local viewers. In addition to driving 30% of internet traffic on the day, Peacock garnered its largest single-day performance in audience usage, engagement and time spent with 16.3 million concurrent devices utilizing the service.

A new study by Antenna demonstrates that 3 million users engaged in paid sign-ups for Peacock in a three-day window surrounding the exclusive NFL Wild Card game broadcast. According to the most recent Comcast earnings release, subscribers for the service increased by almost 50% year-over-year to 31 million. Seven weeks after the game’s conclusion, Antenna measured 29% churn among users whose sign-ups it attributed to the Wild Card game. As a result, it presumes that 71% of this group of users remained subscribed to the service.

NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast, paid $110 million to stream the game in a landmark agreement with the National Football League. Amazon is reportedly paying $120 million to serve as the exclusive home of an NFL playoff game next season, adding to its slate of Thursday Night Football contests throughout the regular season schedule.

NBC was the television broadcast home for Super Bowl LVI in February 2022, which resulted in a championship for the Los Angeles Rams over the Cincinnati Bengals. The game was also available to stream live on Peacock, and two months later, Antenna found that 62% of the related sign-ups remained subscribed to the service.

Following this broadcast, NBC Sports announced new Sunday Night Football broadcasters in play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico and sideline reporter Melissa Stark joining longtime color commentator Cris Collinsworth. Rob Hyland was also named the new coordinating producer of the property, collaborating with director Drew Esocoff. During the 2023 regular season, Sunday Night Football averaged a total audience delivery of 21.4 million viewers and remained on pace to finish as the most-watched prime-time television program for the 13th consecutive year.

In a previous interview with Barrett Sports Media, NBC Sports President Rick Cordella explained that Peacock is part of every rights deal that the sports division executes. The most recent Nielsen Gauge Report states that Peacock is responsible for 1.4% of total day viewing among persons 2+, part of a streaming category with a 37.7% share in the total scope of outlets. Yet Peacock total-day average viewership declined to 791,000 in February, down 19.5% from the 982,000 it amassed in January.

NBCUniversal recently announced that it will air a daily whiparound program titled Gold Zone during the Olympic Games Paris 2024. The program will be hosted by Scott Hanson, Andrew Siciliano, Matt Iseman and Akbar Gbajabiamila, officially taking the air for its season debut at 7 a.m. EST on July 27. This show will bring viewers the latest highlights and achievements from all of the Olympic events, which could include up to 40 occurring simultaneously. NBC will also present its traditional Olympics coverage on linear television, marking the 11th time the network is serving as the home of the Summer Olympic Games.

The company also revealed that former NFL quarterback Peyton Manning and singer/songwriter Kelly Clarkson will join host Mike Tirico for coverage of the Opening Ceremony. Jimmy Fallon, host of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, will work with Tirico during the Closing Ceremony on Aug. 11 in Paris, France.

As ESPN prepares to launch its direct-to-consumer product no later than 2025, there have been questions pertaining to its presentation within the overall company environment and how it will tie into its other offerings. The Walt Disney Company, which has 80% ownership in ESPN, recently agreed with FOX Corporation and Warner Bros. Discovery to enter into a joint streaming venture that will combine channels from all three companies to create a direct-to-consumer offering. Nonetheless, ESPN is going ahead with its Flagship direct-to-consumer product, discussions that ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro remembers were taking place in early 2018.

At the time, Pitaro was leading the consumer products and interactive division at The Walt Disney Company and remembers discussions about the future of the dissemination of the ESPN brand. The company introduced ESPN+ in April 2018 as a niche offering, but the leadership knew that it was just the start. From that time, the intent was about expanding the accessibility of its primary channels to a direct-to-consumer platform. Once Flagship is officially introduced, it will encompass the ESPN channel, along with ESPN2, ESPNEWS, college channels and ESPN+.

“We have not yet decided what ESPN+ will look like in a world where we take our flagship channels and make them direct-to-consumer. That is a work in progress,” Pitaro said in an interview with Alex Sherman of CNBC. “Regardless when we do make our channels available direct-to-consumer – our primary channels – whatever ESPN+ is in that environment will be made available to the customer that subscribes to Flagship.”

Pitaro acknowledged that innovation has set ESPN apart from its competition for many years and credited his predecessors and the company’s employees. When Flagship becomes available en masse, Pitaro aspires for there to be evident product enhancements within the experience, including interactive elements such as customization and personalization. He stated that ESPN will lean more into that area as it builds a product within its ESPN app interface.

“When I fire up the ESPN app and if I’m a subscriber to ESPN Flagship direct-to-consumer, then it shouldn’t just be about the guide,” Pitaro said. “It should be about recommendations, and we’re doing a lot of this today, but you can imagine a lot more in terms of recommendation, customization. So there’s personalization where the algorithms kick in, but more customization opportunity for me to let ESPN – as a sports fan – let ESPN know what my interests are in terms of sports, in terms of teams, in terms of players.”

Despite the forthcoming launch of Flagship, ESPN will still keep its linear channels as part of the traditional television bundle. Data from S&P Global Market Audience referenced in the CNBC documentary outlines that ESPN charges $9.42 to cable providers for every one of its subscribers. The Walt Disney Company’s most recent earnings report outlines that ESPN earned $4.07 billion in revenue during the first quarter of fiscal year 2024, equating to $255 million in operating income.

From 2013 to 2023, about 40 million households canceled traditional cable service, according to eMarketer and Insider Intelligence. This has ostensibly presented a quandary for ESPN, with approximately 62% of its revenue in fiscal year 2023 emanating from cable subscription fees. Pitaro expressed that the team at ESPN has been disciplined in a variety of areas such as rights acquisitions, which has negotiated several deals over the last few years.

“We can’t have everything and we know that, and so we’ve been very careful in terms of what deals we renewed and which deals we decided to walk away from,” Pitaro said. “We’ve been very careful in terms of the investments in general that we’ve made.”

ESPN is prioritizing digital media and is in the midst of evaluating potential strategic partners to help catalyze and hasten the adoption of the Flagship direct-to-consumer offering. Pitaro explained that he and The Walt Disney Company Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger met to discuss this point and reached a conclusion that there are partners out there. At the moment, the company considers potential partners through the lens of technology, marketing and content as the big ones with whom they are speaking. It has been reported that these brands could acquire an equity stake in ESPN as part of the deal, which LightShed Partners and Bank of America estimate to have a valuation between $20 billion and $30 billion.

“For us, it’s not about equity; it’s not about these partners taking an ownership interest in ESPN,” Pitaro explained. “That is something, as Bob has said, that we are very much open to. This is about partnership and accelerating the launch or the adoption of the ESPN Flagship.”

When The Walt Disney Company launched Disney+, it partnered with Verizon in a distribution deal. Pitaro feels the deal was beneficial for Verizon because it attracted new subscribers to its portfolio, along with hypothesizing that it reduced overall churn. As ESPN continues to penetrate into the digital age, it is working to appeal to younger consumers through its audience expansion initiative. That is part of the rationale of licensing The Pat McAfee Show in a multi-year deal in addition to employing professionals who solely focus on the brand’s social media presence.

Digital encompasses part of the value proposition ESPN brings to its rights negotiations amid an era where other technology and commerce brands, such as Apple, Google and Amazon, are bidding and/or considering larger investments into live sports rights. Pitaro believes that as a business within The Walt Disney Company, it can leverage the breadth of its portfolio to provide strong propositions to sports leagues in addition to its production abilities.

“We’ve been at this for 44 years,” Pitaro said. “It is not easy to produce events; live events at scale, and we do it incredibly well. A lot of our competition does as well, but when you add all this; when you piece it together, the power of our brand and what the ESPN brand stands for in terms of trust and credibility, I will tell you without any hesitation that we’ve always had competition. We have more competition today than we’ve ever had, but I do really like our hand.”